Cleric ‘Linked To Malala Attack’ To Lead Pakistan Taliban

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Miranshah (Pakistan) (AFP) – The Pakistani Taliban appointed a hardline cleric suspected of links to the attack on Malala Yousafzai as their new chief Thursday, throwing proposed peace talks with the government into serious doubt.

Maulana Fazlullah, elected by the Taliban ruling council, led the militants’ brutal two-year rule in Pakistan’s northwest valley of Swat in 2007-2009, before a military operation retook the area.

Announcing the new leader at a press conference in an undisclosed location in northwest Pakistan, caretaker chief Asmatullah Shaheen said the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) would not negotiate with the government “until it announces the complete enforcement of sharia”.

Nicknamed “Mullah Radio” for his fiery speeches over the airwaves, Fazlullah takes over leadership of the TTP after his predecessor Hakimullah Mehsud was killed in a U.S. drone strike last Friday.

Pakistani intelligence believes Fazlullah is linked to the failed attempt to kill schoolgirl education activist Malala, who was shot in Swat in October 2012.

During Fazlullah’s rule in Swat, the Taliban enforced a rigorous version of Islamic law, publicly beheading and flogging wrongdoers and burning schools.

Fazlullah fled Swat, where he is from, when the army swept in to retake the valley, and is believed to have been in hiding in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan. Pakistan says he has directed attacks on its soil from across the border.

The decision to appoint him leader of the TTP was greeted with heavy celebratory gunfire in Miranshah, the main town in the North Waziristan tribal area.

Taliban ‘will be more brutal’

The killing of Mehsud on Friday came as government representatives prepared to meet the TTP with a view to opening peace talks.

Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif was more measured, but said his government was committed to seeking peace through dialogue and stressing that an end to bloodshed could not be achieved “by unleashing senseless force”.

Sharif came to power in May partly on a pledge to hold talks to try to end the TTP’s bloody insurgency, which has fuelled instability in the nuclear-armed nation.